


I Was Too Late

by KristleTribble



Series: Hetalia Valentine's Event - 2020 [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Agnostic Character, Car Accidents, Depression, F/M, Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, M/M, One Night Stands, One-Sided Attraction, Suicide, Temporary Amnesia, Trauma, other characters not mentioned in tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:55:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22516606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KristleTribble/pseuds/KristleTribble
Summary: A brief two-chapter drabble, non-country AU.Lars lives in Amsterdam with his sister Laura, and they throw a party to celebrate the legalization of recreational weed. After waking up, the man has fleeting memories of a one-night stand, but it may be too late to change such a relationship.A warning for angst, suicide, amnesia, and trauma.
Relationships: Belgium & Luxembourg & Netherlands (Hetalia), Belgium/Spain (Hetalia), Netherlands/Norway (Hetalia)
Series: Hetalia Valentine's Event - 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620070
Kudos: 5





	1. Holding Hands -- Day 3 prompt

Sigurd's hands were cold to the touch, like a marbled layer of ice had seemed to crawl over his pinkish skin and reject Lars' embrace.

That's all the Dutchman remembered from yesterday, as he woke up in the pool behind his sister's house. The morning sun blinded his eyes disparately through summer greens in the sky, and as he tried all the harder to blink his stupor away, the fuzzier the ash tree above him became.

He sat up in a mental fog, irises glazing over his soaked shorts and slightly ripped shirt hem. Then they fixated on a metal heap just next to the diving board -- it was cerulean ripples on the chrome grey of Laura's lawn trimmer. The poor thing had a party hat tied around it, and Lars could only guess that it couldn't find a path back to its charger.

Speaking of path, there were cups strewn about the place, red plastic dancing in the wind. Weed streamers -- yes, literally green hemp paper cut into leaves -- blew on the laundry line, and Lars' face turned up in slight disgust at the garishness of the whole scene.

What the fuck happened last night?

That was the question he desperately latched on to, though he kept his outward calm, dripping his way with one sandal through the patio sliding door. It was hotter than Satan's ass-crack this summer. He felt it through the way the wet sandal almost sizzled on the dry pavement, and the slight burn popping up like acne on his tall face.

"Fucking hell," the man muttered. "It's a damn mess."

It wasn't clear whether he was talking about the remnants of last night's weed party or the state of his own life choices.

Lars found his sister coming downstairs with Antonio behind her. He rolled his eyes at them and lanked away into the kitchen, padding across the light tiling, on the hunt for some juice or something to munch on.

He could hear the Spaniard whispering to her in the other room, them sharing a little dialogue, but he paid it no heed as he ducked to avoid the archway. The fridge was pretty much raided from last night, to no one's surprise, and every container of beer was either outside or crushed and stacked into a little pyramid on the kitchen island, post-it note laying haphazardly on top.

The note from Arthur: "I wonder if I could stand on this!"

Lars surmised, by the relatively undamaged state of the area, that he never got the chance to try that. He grunted in disappointment at the paucity of food, stopping by the door to rub at his eyes and dripping hair.

He fetched a memory from last night, as it all started coming back to him.

* * *

Yes, they were chill hands creeping down the Dutchman's back, so achingly slow.

"For a stranger, you're pretty damn gentle," Lars recalled saying.

And that teasing response from Sigurd, the one of "Just leave it at 'you're pretty'", coldly and succinctly, frank and cut in stone. Snatched were the strings of Lars' heart in that moment, when the man inside him became matched properly to a face, to a sassy identity, to a man so self-restrained and noble in his efforts -- even despite the way Lars could feel him growing crazy.

An understatement? Of the century, you could be sure.

It was in that moment that the tall and blazed man knew he belonged to someone.

But did Sigurd know?

By the slight squeeze of frozen hands on soft yet firm thighs, did Sigurd know?

* * *

Lars could only hope.

His head knocked listlessly against the frame of his bedroom door, looking around for any trace of last night. A phone number, a call-me-again or a forget-me-not, what was he hoping for anyway?

It was silly to believe in love at first sight, let alone counting his blessings that he was found as attractive to a guy.

The poor hungover fellow let himself try to shatter his dreams again.

"I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing...." Lars hummed mindlessly, a vague quotation of a love-lost song in a different time, a different time signature than the way his organs squirmed when he thought of that man, and no --

His thumb stopped, hovered over the complete lack of a trace in his phone numbers, screen sharp and truth-blazing.

"Lars?" His sister called from the stairwell. "Lars, can you come down here? Antonio left just now."

The man pocketed his cell and followed the timid voice.

Laura was perched on the back of the sitting room futon, eyes slightly glazed over from her own sort of post-drunken difficulty. "Someone left you a note last night, um, Tony found it sticking out of the vase over there...." Her green eyes flicked over to the window, and in an instant, Lars could read the hints of 'enigma', 'remorse', and 'curiosity' in her gaze.

He didn't like that kind of cocktail, not especially from his little sister.

It was warm hands that adopted the little vase note, a strange neon blue post-it-note of the square variety, peculiar and uncommon. Laura approached her brother and cautiously laid a hand on his elbow. "Who left it...?" Came up calmly, yet softly.

The Dutchman shook his head slightly, eyes surmising the little scrap, fragile against his large hands.

He knew who it was, but strength had failed him from speaking.

_You made this party good enough for me. But the world has not been kind. I can't stay much longer, and I've decided to let you be my last. You know who you are, and you know my cold hands. I don't think they're capable of love anymore. Thanks for letting me in._

"Lars...?" His little sister leaned forward, looking up with worrisome folds on her brow, the kind that caused her to seem five years her own elder. "What's going on?"

He shook his head, and only crumpled up the post-it note, moving away to toss it carelessly on the carpet.

"...It's a damn mess," he repeated quietly.

The sound of the summer wind rustling through the trees called from the patio door, and the whir of cicadas filled a raucous vacuum in the innards of Lars' head.

He thought he knew what had happened without actually knowing.

Love at first sight?

It doesn't exist beyond the first hours you see someone.

XXX


	2. Rejection -- Day 4 Prompt

I ache for him.

I hear the chords of agony even now, as they stream into the gentle light of my room, where I sit here, self-consciously, hammering away the keys, and fucking hoping beyond fucking hope that no one sees this shit.

A week ago, Laura came to me, it was like a fever dream, when she quietly popped her head in the doorway and innocently said, "Eirikur's on the phone right now, he wants to talk to you."

I should have told her no. I should have said for her to let it be, and hang up, damn her being so damn nosy in my personal life, but what the hell? I let it happen just to liven my life up a little.

She traced the note to Sigurd alright. His brother confirmed the handwriting, said he had gone away on a hiking trip the morning Tony found the note.

And what was I hoping for anyway?

Eirikur told me that I couldn't have the number. Sigurd told him 'fairly explicitly' no. That I couldn't have it.

I couldn't handle it. I needed to know what was going on.

And now I'm here.

This isn't even my room. It's a hotel.

God, I don't believe in you, but please tell me something's gonna change. You can't keep me high-strung like this or I'm gonna snap, I can feel it.

Someone's gotta have the answer to why Sigurd's avoiding me. I need to know why I feel strongly about him but he doesn't want anything more with me.

* * *

You're a cruel fucking bastard, sick and twisted beyond the pits of fucking hell. Maybe you do exist and you're playing this disgusting little game of Sims with my life right now, and I want you to know that you can take your holiness and let it raw you till the day you fucking perish.

I want to claw my eyes out and never see anything again.

You took a chance for change straight out of my grasp, and I couldn't even see the signs that he was struggling so hard before it all came rushing out of the gate.

Subjecting me to his cold hands, you're worse than the worse man on Earth, fucking sick.

You know where I saw him? Huh? Were you fucking watching that too?

I saw his blue eyes rolled into his head, his bleeding fucking head.

You let him fall. Like some kind of twisted monologue about fallen angels and shit like that.

Heaven on Earth? Come eat my ass and then let's discuss what you took from me.

Did you see what he did? How every little drip played out on the rocks beneath?

The news called it an accident. Nice joke you put out. It's a little reassuring to know the big G has a sense of humour comparable to the size of the fucking cosmos.

IT WAS A SUICIDE. STOP FUCKING AROUND WITH ME.

I know I know I know what happened. I know now.

God why didn't he tell me? That he was desperate to find something?

Eirikur never told me, Laura never told me, nobody ever fucking told me! That he had depression? Maybe if I knew that I would have been less blinded by lust and more willing to stop and ask if he was okay, instead of just hooking up for a night?

He was looking to fill that hole inside him, fucking shit!

I couldn't satisfy him?

That's....

Fuck that hits hard....

I guess I wasn't that someone.

I can't....

I can't, he didn't...

I wasn't....

No, but I couldn't be that person for him.

I was just a stranger and nothing else.

My feelings didn't mean anything to him?

* * *

~~Week 4, Friday, Sunny~~

Lars has been in a bit of a difficult state, but I've encouraged him to sign up for therapy with a bit of help from Claude.

I worry about him constantly.

We were all involved in an accident on the highway coming back from Amsterdam. I blacked out, and Claude and Lars both got knocked around really badly. I cried when I realized we were all alive, and I think Lars did too, when we were out of the hospital room. The nurse taking his measurements asked us about why he was so dehydrated and underweight....

In the end, Claude had to tell her about his grief, and not me. I wasn't strong enough to tell her all of what happened.

It was strange.

When I came back in later, Lars looked at me with the strangest expression. Let me see if I can recall the conversation we had for this journal.

_Brother: Do you remember a party? Back in what, July?_

_Me: August, Lars. Yeah?_

_B: Could have sworn it was July. But I thought of something right before the crash that felt familiar? Like not happy, fuck, I can't explain it..._

_Me: Take your time?_

_B: Sure, sure.... I don't... Fuck, I can't remember it. Ugh._

_Me: Lars, it's okay, we all got really shook by that crash. I'm just... I'm happy we're both alive? You know?_

_B: Yeah, I just keep thinking back to that party. I know we had it to make a celebration about them legalizing weed? Sound right?_

_Me: No that's completely right? You got blazed out of your gourd though, heheh...._

_B: Fuck, I think I did. I remember feeling like shit in the morning...._

_Me: Yeah.... and I remember Tony -- he made fun of you for it..._

_B: Did he? Shit.... that rat bastard....but whatever._

But.... we continued the conversation naturally.... he never brought up Sigurd at all.

I'm worried for him.

I'm worried for him, but I think we miraculously happened upon one of the better scenarios.

It sounds cruel to say, but... It's better that he doesn't remember Sigurd. It made him go crazy, anyway.

I need to go talk to Claude. Maybe he can offer some light on this.

And, not that it matters, but just in case...

....

Just in case you're somehow reading this...

....

I'm glad you're here, and that you're alive.

XXX


End file.
